With the hyperventilation over health care having abated a bit — which is to say, now that we all understand civilization has neither been saved nor destroyed, that angels didn’t sing nor did evil triumph — let’s ponder how North Carolina’s capitalist pie might get resliced as a result.

While the builders of Daytona and Atlanta made significant gambles to see their projects come to fruition and experienced their share of delays and shortfalls, these paled in comparison with the outlandish risks and the obstacles faced by Curtis Turner and Bruton Smith in constructing Charlotte Motor Speedway.

People filing into the Charlotte Convention Center make their way around a small commotion. A woman robed as Lady Justice, glowing with gold paint, points her sword at a few chunks of coal on the sidewalk. Other protesters with signs and a megaphone denounce “the Hypocrite of the Year” about to be honored inside. The target of their ire: Jim Rogers, chairman, president and CEO of Duke Energy Corp., the Charlotte-based utility that is expanding a power plant an hour’s drive away in Cliffside.

Four years ago — when $300 golf rounds, $500 hotel rooms and $2,000 business suits rarely raised an eyebrow — Chris Knott fidgeted in his chair when industry confidants suggested he raise the prices of the shirts, sweaters, trousers and other accouterments in his Peter Millar line of clothing.

Mac Williams admits it grudgingly — after being prodded a few times. Yes, the president of the Alamance County Area Chamber of Commerce concedes, it hurt when Burlington-based Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings decided to put a billing center in Greensboro.